The present inventor has developed an electronic brain atlas database [8]. There is a strong commercial interest in this database, particularly, for functional neurosurgery and the atlases have already been integrated with several commercial systems. There are two major problems associated with the current electronic brain atlas database. First, the atlases are constructed based on a few brains only. Second, these atlases are anatomical, while the actual stereotactic targets are functional. The present invention seeks to overcome both limitations and opens new possibilities, particularly, in providing a community-centric approach in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery.
During surgical procedures, such as the treatment of Parkinson's disease, electrodes (or “microelectrodes”; in this document the term “electrodes” will be used to include microelectrodes) are inserted into the patient's brain to map it in order to identify stereotactic targets. This brain mapping is able to locate the functional position of cerebral structures. The electrodes used for stereotactic and functional procedures contain one or more contacts and these contacts, while being placed within a given structure in the brain, are activated. By knowing the coordinates of the activated contacts and their size and electrophysiological properties, the activated region within the studied structure can be determined. Several electrodes may be inserted into the patient's brain during surgery, either unilaterally or bilaterally, providing information about functional location of cerebral structures for a patient treated or subject studied. By collecting the data from numerous patients, it is possible to construct probabilistic maps showing functional distribution of cerebral structures in a human brain. These functional probabilistic maps have great importance in treatment, particularly in surgery of movement disorders and in brain research.